


The price he pays

by ehlena



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Death, Immortality, Other, Price of Immortality, if you want a happy ever after, it's not the good story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 04:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8735107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehlena/pseuds/ehlena
Summary: Prompt :« either must die at the hand of the other »...and now that Tom Riddle is dead for good, Harry Potter will learn the high price he has to pay to have made the world a little less evil.He wonders if it was worth it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story won't have a happy end in the way you think a story has a happy end. But it will be something.
> 
> Also, english isn't my first language, so pardonnez-moi.

Neville is the first one to go.

He wasn't even that old, just celebrated his 80th birthday, but sometimes life had it's way.

*

Ginny followed not even 10 years later, and it was a tragedy. 

She was his and only his and he doesn't know a world without her. He's afraid and he's lost and he wants to scream but there's nothing to say really. 

He can't even cry, because crying is something, and really, he is so empty he can't even do that. Blood is in his mouth at the funerals and maybe it's because he bite his tongue or maybe it's his heart dying from within. He won't ever know. She's pale and he's even paler and he can't feel the fingers that brushes his hand and if it wasn't for everybody else he would just lay down with her and get six feet under because now life his boring.

 

*

And life goes on, but not with the same sun. Not with the same taste. Everything seems a little bit stranger, a little bit fader. Or maybe it's only because she was spice and color and sound and laughs. 

*

And the list add-on.

George, Percy, Angelina, Bill, Fleur. 

Names and names of people he knows, he knew, people he loves and loved. 

Life didn't make sense anymore.

*

Ron.

His first friend is gone and if he still had a heart he thinks it would die out again.

And Hermione's hand was cold in his, but he didn't had anything to say. Harry knew, and he still knows, what it feels like to lose the only love of our live, and so he rubs her back while she discovers what real emptiness is like.

*

And it's not like they didn't knew.

He was never sick, and spells bounced around him when they hit everybody else, and if he _did_ get hurt he would heal in a minute.

And if that was not enough of a clue, there was still the fact that time didn't affect him. He still looked like a 27 years old boy, and it was terrible year after year to discover that you look less and less like you and more and more like your son.

(because of course it wouldn't come right away.)

Of course he had to think it was over and he was fine and he could grew happy and be with his family and have his forever ever after, _of course._

_Life is such a bitch._

*

Luna is gone too.

He looks at the ceiling of the church, because Luna is the moon, and her hair are stars, but hey, stars fade, stars burns out, and everything that was once golden turns to grey..

*

Hermione is the last one standing.  
The know it's gonna happen sooner than later, but they don't talk about it.

\- You know you won't. You've known it for a while now.

He doesn't answer. What do you have to say when you're about to enter a world you never wanted to see.

\- I love you.

And he lost the last friend he has.

Her grave is next to Ron's and it snowed and he just want to touch her one last time.  
He blows the snow and how is that for symmetry, he remembers, for she was the one removing snow from his parent's grave so long ago.

And pain is sharp, it destroys him, and pain is screaming, and it's so loud, and he cannot understand anymore.

*

sorrow. and blood and darkness. and sorrow again.

*

And now it's Teddy's turn.

And Victoire's.

And Lorcan's and Rose's.

He waits for the terrible moment he will lose everything.

*

Albus is the first one to go. Not that it is a surprise, he was always the first one to do everything. He wanted to explore, to be known, to be greater than his pairs.

It was only normal that he would want to open the trail.

James follows some months later. His salt and pepper hairs seems so soft on his pale face.

And Lily is gone and the world is black.

And this is unfair, he thinks, because he died for everyone to live, and now everyone's dead and he's so freaking alive it's not even funny. And how is that fair ?

Pain is violently silent as he drowns in the void he has become.

*

he travels, I mean, what else could he do.

* 

he's back, years later, centuries later really, but now everything is different.

The world of today, they don't understand.

They have lived in a Voldemort-free society all their lives, and his name is like a souvenir, and they know he is a hero, but what for, and what is the real sacrifice he made, that, nobody remembers. He is alone and, he thinks, if glory could maybe be a little bandaid in his ocean of souffrance, he couldn't even have that now.

So what is the real tragedy, he wonders.

A world without evil where nobody knows what fear is like, and they don't care, and they will do the same mistakes again.  
Or a world with the bad villain where love is a miracle.

He knows, oh he knows.  
And what a twisted thing to think, that the world he liberated from Voldemort isn't worth the eternity of pain he now deals with.  
But again, living hundreds years alone, and in pain, and without consolation, is enough to change your priorities.

*

He used to think life was black and white, but now he knows it's more grey, and then he thinks it's all black, but after all black is fine and he just doesn't care.

*

So he does the unthinkable.  
He searches for years, but it's not like time is an issue.  
And then he finds.

*

In front of the little memorial, he disposes the ingredients.  
47 ingredients, to be exact.  
He makes the potion slowly, it was never his force, and you can see the name Tom Riddle looking at him from the grave.

 _Here lies Tom Riddle._  
To remind you that evil isn't necessary.  
That being alone is not the end.  
That there's always another solution.

And Harry laughs at the irony.

Tom Riddle had everything, _but morals._

Harry had everything and he lost it, and then his moral went somewhere else.  
Somewhere **far.**

765 years after he killed Voldemort, he resuscitates him.  
And the silhouette that emerges from the cauldron isn't the one he killed, it's younger, it's beautiful. He would have followed him, he thinks, if it was the one that came first.

He'll live forever now.

And this time, when the surprised silhouette frowns, when the wand raises, he isn't afraid.  
That's déjà-vu after all.

The green light hits him and he welcomes it and he is happy, now.

So much for the world he wanted.  
So much for the happy ending of everyone _but_ him.

But truth be said, who are you to judges him ?


End file.
